MICA McNEILL and Mica Moore made Winter Olympic history as they achieved the best ever result by a British female bobsleigh crew at a Winter Games.

McNeill, who is from Consett, teamed up with Moore to finish in eighth position in Pyeongchang, with the pair achieving their pre-Games ambition of securing a top-ten spot.

The British duo were sitting in sixth position overnight after their opening two runs, but slipped to eighth after a couple of minor errors on their third slide.

They produced an improved performance on their fourth and final run, and eventually finished with a combined time of 3:24.07, which was just 1.62secs behind the winning two-woman crew from Germany.

The German bob claimed the gold medal, with United States taking silver and Canada claiming bronze, but McNeill and Moore could be extremely satisfied with their performance given the obstacles that were placed in their way prior to the Olympics.

The pair were told their funding was being removed in October, and were forced to embark on a crowd-funding programme that eventually raised more than £30,000 and resulted in them racing in a bob with ‘Powered by the people’ emblazoned on the side.

“It feels amazing,” said McNeill, who first took up bobsleigh on the dry run at Camp Hill in North Yorkshire. “Five months ago we didn’t know if we would even be here, so just to get here is an achievement in itself.

“We’ve loved every minute and we just want to thank everyone who has helped us to make sure we got here.

“We were told we weren’t medal potential so it was nice to be able to show what we could do. We’ll be back in four years’ time. You’ll see us again. I really hope we don’t have to ask the people again. We don’t want to be powered by the people again, as enjoyable as it’s been. We just want the people to be able to watch us.”

McNeill was delighted to have secured a top-ten finish, although she admitted she had not been at her absolute best over the four Olympic runs.

“There’s things I’m always going to kicking myself about, but we always said we wanted to enjoy it and we’ll enjoy the single-figure result,” she said. “We were in the mix after yesterday, but I’m not really comfortable on this track and I had a couple of mistakes with my driving.”